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Mike Wingate had a rough childhood — he was abandoned at a playground at four years old and raised in foster care. No one ever came to claim him, and he has only a few, fragmented memories of his parents. Now, as an adult, Mike is finally living the life he had always wanted - he’s happily married to Annabel, the woman of his dreams; they have a precocious eight-year-old daughter, Kat; and his construction company is about to finish a “green” housing development that will secure a solid future for them all. Then the unimaginable happens: Something from Mike’s own past, a past he doesn’t even remember, comes back to visit terror upon him and his family. Menacing characters show up and begin threatening Mike, and when he reports them, the police seem more interested in Mike’s murky past than in investigating or protecting his young family. Now, with Mike, his wife, and their daughter suddenly under attack from all sides, Mike must turn to Shep, a truly dangerous man - and Mike’s only true friend — from their childhood days together in foster care. Together, the two of them will do whatever it takes to protect Mike’s family against the hidden men behind the terrifying warning “You’re Next!”

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Product Description

Mike Wingate, abandoned by his father at four and raised in foster care, is finally living the life he always dreamed of—he’s happily married with a precocious 8-year-old daughter, and his construction company is about to finish a “green” housing development that will secure a solid future for them all. But then something from his own past, a past he doesn’t even remember, comes back to visit terror upon him and his family.

Shady characters begin threatening Mike and, when he reports them, the police seem more interested in Mike’s murky past than in protecting him. Now, with Mike, his wife Annabel and daughter Kat suddenly under attack from all sides, Mike turns to Shep, a dangerous man—and Mike’s only true friend— from his childhood days in foster care. Together they will do whatever it takes to protect Mike’s family against the hidden men behind the terrifying warning, “You’re Next.”

Amazon Exclusive: David Baldacci Reviews You're Next

David Baldacci is a worldwide bestselling novelist. His books have been published in over 45 languages and in more than 80 countries; more than 110 million copies are in print. His most recent book is The Sixth Man.

I'm no stranger to Gregg Hurwitz's work. I tore through Trust No One like a meth addict on a binge. The guy does his best work, I think, when he takes a murky past and slams it in the face of his protagonist decades later. You're Next is right in this wheelhouse. The Prologue is pure adrenaline, heart-wrenching and starts the novel off on a terrific trajectory. A little boy wakes up and over the course of a few pages he is abandoned by his father. The reader takes an emotional arrow right in the heart. Right away we want to know more about the kid and what became of him. Lots of questions unanswered. But you know with Hurwitz that while the questions eventually will be answered, they won't be in ways the reader can easily predict.

The boy has grown into a man, but he can't escape his past. Mike is a good guy trying to make a living for his family. An environmentally conscious builder, he works hard and tries to stand by his word. Before he can draw a breath he's hit by a tsunami. Events tumble out, each one more inexplicable and seemingly disconnected than its predecessor. What Hurwitz also does extremely well is put one in the moment. Big scenes are tough to write, but the smaller ones are tougher still. It's like the tendons and ligaments connecting the large muscle masses together. You mess those up, nothing else works right. He's also a fine wordsmith. "A gloved fist the size of a dumbbell flew at her, shattering her eye socket and knocking her back into the front door, rocketing it inward so hard the handle stuck in the drywall. A moment of tranquility. Even the crickets were awed into silence...His plain, handsome face was oddly smooth, almost generic, as if his features were pressed through latex." Good, good stuff.

What Mike now faces are demons from his past. Desperate, organized, efficiently ruthless men are coming for him. But now it's not just Mike. He has a family, wife Annabel and their daughter Kat, a precocious eight-year-old. He has an ally from old days, before he was Mike, husband, businessman, father. The survival instinct takes over and the battle is engaged. I read lots of thrillers and mysteries, and have gotten pretty good at separating the wheat from the chaff, figuring out the foreshadowing, what seemingly insignificant clues, what seemingly throw-off lines and what nuggets of seemingly useless information are actually critical to understanding the plot. But Hurwitz is a skilled hand and at the end of the day I say just let this baby ride till the last page. Then you can close the book, stammer something about that SOB getting you again, and you can wait with breathless anticipation for the man to reload his Glock and fire away on his next thriller.

Review

"You're Next is an emotionally evocative, page-turning exploration of human corruption at its worst. Chilling and riveting!” --Jonathan Kellerman on You're Next

“Excellent…keeps Mike (and the reader) on edge, wondering what is happening to him and how far it will escalate. Highly recommended to Hurwitz’s many faithful readers and to fans of Linwood Barclay, Harlen Coben, and Lisa Gardner.” -- Booklist on You're Next

“You’re Next is a deft, expertly plotted thriller driven by the kind of realistic suspense that will make any reader’s heartbeat race.” Thomas Perry on You're Next

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

So it's Father's Day, and my wife and younger daughter ask me what I want to do. My response? "I want to finish reading YOU'RE NEXT." And that's what I did. The book is pitch-perfect from beginning to end, a wild summer night's ride that starts with a tragic event and concludes with a pair of climaxes --- one cataclysmic and the other heart-rending --- with a bunch of heart-stopping scenarios along the way.

Here's how smart this novel is. One of the staple plots for many excellent thrillers is the sudden disappearance of a child. After all, can you imagine anything more terrifying? What Hurwitz does is take that plot and turn it inside out. In YOU'RE NEXT, it's the parents who disappear, leaving behind a four-year-old boy named Michael, who is bothered and bewildered when his father pulls up to a school parking lot and drops him off with the clothes on his back and a tearful wave goodbye. All Michael knows is his first name; his last name, hometown and street address are unknown.

Michael all too quickly finds himself in foster care, moving through the system and almost getting stuck in it. Throughout the years, he manages to right himself through a combination of hard work, right choices, tough decisions, and, perhaps most importantly, the kindness of a stranger who had ample reason to be anything but kind. Michael --- now known as Mike Wingate --- marries Annabel, the woman of his dreams. In due order they have a daughter named Kat, who, as things get rolling in the book, is eight years old and almost too precocious for her own good. They are also busy sinking time, money, the whole nine yards into a revolutionary construction project that will make or break them.Read more ›

You're Next by Gregg Hurwitz is a captivating mystery thriller that I could not put down.

At four years old, Mike did not know his address or even his last name when he woke up in the back of his station wagon. Parked in front of an unknown elementary school, he noticed his father's white knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel and the bright blood on his cuffs. Frightened and confused, he would always remember his father's words: "None of this is your fault." Obeying his father, he slowly walked to the nearby school playground never to see his parents again.

Why?

Believing his father would come back for him only fueled the verbal and physical abuse of other hardened foster children who bullied him on a regular bases until new meat arrived. Hearing impaired, lanky and uncoordinated Sheppard White was bullied and beaten daily by the thugs. Though told to stay down, he always got up. The one day he did not, Mike jumped in and made him get up. From that day forward Mike was family to "Shep." As they grew up, that bond grew stronger when Mike lost his college scholarship after taking the criminal rap and short juvenile incarceration sentence for Shep to keep him from conviction of the "three strike rule" that would have sent him to prison for 25 years.

With Shep leading a life of crime, Mike has gone straight and is living the good life. He has worked his way up in the world of construction and built a track of "green" houses. Finally, Mike feels secure in his ability to provide for his wife, Annabel and 8-year-old daughter "Kat." His public accolades and media attention for his accomplishments are followed by death threats to him and his family.

Gregg Hurwitz's "You're Next" is a standard "torment the good guy for some unknown reason" novel of suspense. Mike Wingate's memory of his childhood starts at the age of four when his dad, John, abandoned him under mysterious circumstances. The traumatized boy had only vague memories of his origins, and he was not able to provide any useful information to the authorities who questioned him. Consequently, he was sent to foster care, where he befriended a miscreant named Shepherd White, who would remain his buddy on and off throughout the years.

Fortunately for Mike, he meets and marries a beautiful and caring woman, Annabel; the couple is devoted to their precocious only child, eight-year-old Kat. As the product of a dysfunctional childhood, Mike could have become a ne'er-do-well. However, he straightens himself out and it takes thirteen long years "to work his way from hired hand to carpenter to foreman to contractor." Now, he is deeply in debt thanks to his latest project, Green Valley, California, a community of "ecological houses" of which he is extremely proud. Much to Mike's chagrin, he learns some disturbing news about the construction site that knocks him for a loop.

Mike's troubles are just beginning. A trio of sadistic killers is determined to destroy him and his family; the police appear to be in on the conspiracy and Mike has nowhere to turn. He asks Hank Danville, a tough-talking and highly competent private investigator, to gather crucial information. In addition, with the help of his pal, the ever-resourceful Shep, our hero learns to think and act like a criminal. He gets involved in high-speed car-chases and violent confrontations, but still has no idea why he is being targeted for death.Read more ›

More About the Author

Gregg Hurwitz is the critically acclaimed, New York Times and internationally bestselling author of fourteen novels, most recently Don't Look Back, You're Next, The Survivor and Tell No Lies. His books have been nominated for numerous awards, shortlisted twice for best novel of the year by International Thriller Writers, nominated for CWA's Ian Fleming Steel Dagger, chosen as feature selections for all four major literary book clubs, honored as Book Sense Picks, nominated for the Galaxy National Book Award, and translated into twenty two languages.Gregg has written screenplays for or sold spec scripts to many of the major studios, and written, developed, and produced television for various networks. He is also a New York Times Bestselling comic book writer, having penned stories for Marvel (Wolverine, Punisher) and DC (Batman, Penguin). He has published numerous academic articles on Shakespeare, taught fiction writing in the USC English Department, and guest lectured for UCLA, and for Harvard in the United States and internationally. In the course of researching his thrillers, he has sneaked onto demolition ranges with Navy SEALs, swum with sharks in the Galápagos, and gone undercover into mind-control cults.Hurwitz grew up in the Bay Area. While completing a BA from Harvard and a master's from Trinity College, Oxford in Shakespearean tragedy, he wrote his first novel. He was the undergraduate scholar-athlete of the year at Harvard for his pole-vaulting exploits, and played college soccer in England, where he was a Knox fellow. He now lives in L.A. where he continues to play soccer, frequently injuring himself.